City police director Sr. Supt. Angelito Casimiro yesterday echoed his earlier appeal to all religious leaders in the city to help the law enforcers in their continuing war against the illegal drug trade, especially among the youth.

This, after certain Muslim youth group had reportedly resisted the police raid on illegal drugs in Recodo, claiming that using shabu, known as the poor man’s cocaine, is tolerated in Islam.

“So, we are reaching out to the religious leaders to help us disseminate information to the youth and convince them that shabu is haram (taboo) whether in Islam or Christian faiths,” Casimio said during the press briefing with Acting Mayor Cesar Iturralde in City Hall yesterday morning. “We need their help to correct the notion that using shabu is okay,” he added.

In the meantime, Casimiro said the police had initiated a peace dialogue in the west coast during the conduct of the full alert status last week. It was attended by all stakeholders from barangays Limpapa down to Labuan, Sinubong and Patalon.

He said the anti-drug campaign was among the issues discussed during the peace dialogue in a bid to wide and strengthen the scope of the campaign, urging church leaders to include in their preaching or homily the ill-effects of drug use on the personal lives and families of the users.

As this developed, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) regional office in the city is continuing and strengthening its case build-up against high-level drug personalities here even as it recognizes and commends the local police force for its drug war in the barangays.

Marvin Santos, chief of Operations and Planning Division of PDEA-9, said the agency is primarily mandated to go after high-level personalities in the illegal drug trade, while the local police are running after mostly small-time pushers, particularly in heavily drug-affected barangays.

He also lamented the observation that the education sector or the schools have no longer engaged in anti-drug advocacy, for which the school youths nowadays are becoming vulnerable victims of the illegal drugs.—Vic Larato